Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reported at 12:30 PM Kyiv time that on March 27, the Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered no casualties. In the last 24 hours, Russian-terrorist forces opened fire 13 times on Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk and Luhansk sector using heavy weapons in 10 instances.

According to the Ukrainian military intelligence report one invader was killed and two were wounded as a result of returning fire by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on March 27.

2. Razumkov Center: Gap Between Presidential Candidates Narrows Down

Image courtesy of UNIAN

On March 27 the Ukrainian think tank Razumkov Center has released the results of the public opinion poll which was conducted between March 21 and March 26, 2019.

Volodymyr Zelensky continues to lead the race with 18.8% support among all respondents and 24.8% among those who have decided on their candidates closely followed by Petro Poroshenko with 15.7% and 22.1% respectively and Yulia Tymoshenko with 11.5% and 14.8% respectively closing the list of the top three candidates. This looks like a substantial improvement for the incumbent president and a fallout for the former prime minister.

According to the opinion poll, Ukrainians trust most often volunteer organizations (68%), the Church (61%), the Armed Forces of Ukraine (61%), the State Emergency Service (57%), and volunteer battalions (56%).

The highest level of distrust was expressed toward the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament) – 82% do not trust it – the state officials (81%), and Russian media (79%).

The polling was done by interviewing 2017 respondents, ages 18 and over in all regions of Ukraine, except for Crimea and the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The sample of the survey was constructed as a multi-stage, random, with quota selection of respondents at the last stage. The theoretical margin of error (excluding the design effect) does not exceed 2.3% with a probability of 0.95.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) offers an article about how Ukrainians have become increasingly disengaged with the Russian language and culture, since the beginning of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Interviewees talk about how they “like the vast majority of Ukrainians, would watch Russian movies and TV programmes and listen to Russian music.” But then in 2014 many started considering cultural products made in Ukraine and it became the point of no return.

“Moscow always had more money, more opportunities, and the older wave of Ukrainian artists was influenced in a way by the Moscow public, Moscow tastes, Moscow dealers,” said Kostyantyn Doroshenko, an influential Ukrainian art critic. “Five years ago, however, Ukrainian artists refused to participate in a major biennial in Russia [and] I saw with my own eyes how this Russian prestige broke down in a flash,” he noted.

Russian cultural products became less popular in Ukraine for several reasons including the personal boycotts of Ukrainian population and restrictions imposed by the government. Some see modern Russian movies as a tool to promote the Kremlin propaganda and imperial ambitions.

“No matter what the story is about, there’s always a promotion of the idea of making Russia great again,” said Ukrainian sociologist Kateryna Ivaschenko.

Now Ukraine is paying more attention to developing domestic film industry that demised after Ukraine adopted independence allocating a record one billion hryvnia [about CAD 50 million] in 2018 for “film production compared to just 25 million hryvnia in 2014.

4. Canada’s Largest Airport Spells the Name of Ukraine’s Capital Correctly

Toronto Pearson International Airport has changed the transliteration of the Ukrainian capital according to the national standard – Kyiv.

The correct transliteration is now featured both on the arrival/departure board as well as on the airport website.

Notably, Toronto Pearson International Airport is the largest airport in Canada and the only one in country that has direct flights to Ukraine. In 2018, the airport served nearly 50 million passengers and became the 30th largest in the world.

Last October, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine launched #CorrectUA online campaign appealing to foreign media and foreign airports to correct the spelling of Kyiv (#KyivNotKiev). Many European capitals and cities have already supported this initiative.

The difference in spelling of Ukraine’s capital comes from the fact that earlier it was transliterated from Russian. Ukrainian is a state language in Ukraine, therefore the correct spelling in English should be Kyiv.